My Afternoon Tea Reception Venue

I love my reception venue! I love that it's a little bit different, you see it's not only known as 'The Courtyard Coffee House', but also as 'The Penny Farthing Museum' - somehow the two go really well together, you can sit down to a freshly made lunch, or a twist on a traditional fry up and admire the many Penny Farthings hanging from the roof or pegged up on the walls. 

I love that it's local too, in more than one sense. It's local to me - I can sit in our little store and see into the courtyard, but I also see the local milk man pull up each morning, and know that the sausages are made from Cheshire Pork. It's in walking distance from our Chapel too (less than 500 metres!), which means that our guests can take a leisurely stroll from one to the other.

I love that we can have the relaxed afternoon tea reception that we wanted instead of the convention of a three course sit down meal. What says British better than sandwiches, scones, cakes, and home-made lemonade. If there is one thing that this place does best, it's the cakes!! 

I love that there's an outside space, if the weather's nice I can set up a few games for the guests, and drinks will be served in the courtyard.

I love that all of my requests have received a great big yes, and ideas of how to decorate the place to make it look even more amazing have been given back. A bit of bunting and a candle or two will only enhance the already quaint surroundings, and there won't be a chair cover in sight! I can't wait for this hidden gem to wow my guests on the day.

So Many Styles To Choose From

I am of course talking about wedding dresses!!


Big and fluffy isn't my style, so I guess that instantly ruled out the princess dress...

But what do I want?


Let's look at shapes; Column, A-Line, Mermaid, Drop Waist, Grecian, Classic, Empire... The list goes on.

It's not just dress shapes that you've got to consider, but the necklines too. You may think it's simply strapless or not, but no, they wouldn't make it that easy. Check out this chart.

What about embellishing your dress, maybe a bow, a ruffle, or a bit of lace.

Then of course you have to choose the length, it's no longer just about how long the train is, but what about making your dress knee length, ballerina length, or tea length. If you can't decide then why not go for a combination of all three.

At this point you may think that most brides would lose the will to live, and then they throw another question at you. What colour would you like? Erm, white?! Apparently not for all brides, you can have a hint of colour, a splash of colour, or just go crazy!

So there are my options, how silly of me to think this would be a simple choice! 

Wedding Inspiration

I always knew that I didn’t want my wedding to be a replica of the standard wedding, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted. How would I go about planning a wedding that was light hearted and fun, but so unique to us?

The first thing I did was buy just about every wedding magazine going, I trawled through them only to find that all the ideas started to merge, and these magazines assume that every bride is spending £20k on their special day. This just didn’t suit me, so I cut out a few bits and pieces and passed the magazines on to another bride to be.

Then I met up with friends that had already been there, done that. I asked what their favourite part of the day was, and more importantly asking what they’d do differently. I made a mental note of their answers, and I’m storing them away.

I love wedding blogs, hence why I’m doing this one. I particularly love the American blogs, but the weddings aren’t realistic for here, lots of them are set in woodlands, on beaches and in fields – not so great in the rainy north-west of England! But wedding blogs have lots of pretty ideas; I printed pictures out, made notes of inspirational ideas and tried to think of ways to make them my own.

We visited wedding fares too, but the information was limited, the stall holders pushy and prices inflated.

Then there’s the wedding forums, I signed up to a few and dipped in and out of them for a little while, finally settling on the one that suited me, UKBride (I've put a link below!). I read other brides ideas, taking inspiration from them. Questions are raised on these forums that you may not even think of, feeding the photographer, tying in the themes, when to send the invites out, the list goes on. It’s also made me realise that it’s okay to put our foot down and do what we want, not what other people expect.

A combination of all of the above has given us some ideas to work with to make our wedding one that suits us. Now to actually start handing over the cash!

www.ukbride.co.uk/forum

The Venue

As a child I always pictured myself getting married in church. However, not being a church goer it seems a bit hypocritical. Then I stumbled across the most beautiful little chapel in Knutsford. It’s a stunning 17th century building that looks more like a house than a church. Not living in Knutsford I din’t think they’d let us marry there as we’re not part of the parish, however that wasn’t an issue. It’s a Unitarian Chapel, so they’re more relaxed than most churches, they take the emphasis of the bible and put it on to the couple. We have the freedom to choose the music and reading that we want, without being limited by religion or law. We can have the service we want, one that represents us as a couple. Our meeting with the minister went really well and I can’t wait to sort out our service with her.

The Bridesmaids

I’ve just had my first official bridesmaid meet up. I arranged a mini tea party (may as well keep the them going) on Sunday afternoon, where I presented the bridesmaids with a little gift. I bought each of them a Bridesmaid sticker book, it was meant to be a joke, but all three of them took it very seriously and then proceeded to ignore me for the next half and hour!

I’m having two adult bridesmaids, they are both school friends. I was bridesmaid for both of them too, so it feels good to return the favour. I’m hoping that they’ll be able to offer me any advice I need as I go along. They were both really laid back with their own bridesmaids, and I intend to be the same with them. We’ll go dress shopping nearer to the date of the wedding and I’ve said that they can choose a dress style that suits them, if they happen to be the same then great, if not then as long as they fit in with the scheme then that’s fine too.

My niece will be my third bridesmaid. She’s just turned 5, and is very excited to be a princess on my wedding day. She’s actually the more demanding of the three, she’s told me that she’ll be wearing a princess dress, carrying a wand, wearing a tiara and I have to buy her a flower ring.

The wand idea went down well with the adults too, so I may have just saved a bit on flowers!

The Ring

My ring is a little bit special, not only because it starts the next stage of my life with the h2b, but because of the history behind it. About 6 months ago we mentioned to the future mother-in-law that we were starting to think about marriage but were concerned about finding the right ring that was ethical yet beautiful. A few days later my h2b informed me that his mum had offered him two rings, one from each of his grandmothers a solitaire diamond set in 18ct gold and another 18ct gold ring with 7 small diamonds in it. We could go with them as we pleased. This meant that I could re-use the diamonds – meaning that I wasn’t going to be contributing further to the diamond mining industry.

I had a think about what I’d like to do and decided to approach our local jeweller about a design I had in mind. I wanted to take the large diamond from solitaire, and two diamonds from the other ring and have them put into a ring that resembled a shooting star.  Tara, the jeweller, understood what I wanted and proceeded to make a mock-up for me. Once we’d agreed a few changes from that I left it up to the h2b to finalise the details. A few weeks later and my 18ct white gold ring with three diamonds was complete, stamped and ready to be collected.

Here it is…

I plan to use the gold and remaining diamonds in some other way that is linked to the wedding, but I’m not sure how yet

The Proposal

I guess I should start by telling you a little about how the proposal went, as it’s there that the planning really started (okay, I admit, there may have been a wedding magazine or two bought prior to that!).

I’m not the sort of person that likes everybody looking at me, so the idea of a public proposal was terrifying, luckily my wonderful partner took this into account and proposed on the privacy of our own home. I knew the proposal was coming as I’d had the ring designed (I’ll do a separate post on that!), but I didn’t know when. I certainly didn’t think it was going to be at the time it was, I’d been in work all day and we were heading off to a house party that evening.

So, whilst I was at work the H2B set about preparing a tea party for me (I do love afternoon tea), he baked scones, bought clotted cream and jam and set the dining table up to resemble a tea room. He then bought little french fancies and iced the words “will u marry me” on them, these were laid out on the cake stand and the ring was tied to the handle. There was no big romantic speech or overblown gestures. Just the H2B knowing what I’d want and getting it perfectly right.